About CCM

County Cable Montgomery (CCM) is the local cable station you'll want to turn to for local government news, public affairs programming, live Council sessions and County Executive press conferences. Comcast and RCN customers can watch us on channel 6 and Verizon customers can find us on channel 30.

On CCM you'll get answers on what type of services or programs your County government offers, as well as a variety of regular shows and special programming to keep you in touch with your elected officials.

Montgomery County Government’s access channel was created as a means to provide the public with information about Montgomery County Government services, operations and events.

CCM Mission

MISSION

The mission of the channel is:

To expand and enhance public participation in the governmental process by (a) broadcasting meetings of governmental bodies, public hearings, and news conferences; (b) creating and presenting programs that expand the awareness of residents, businesses and visitors of the County government, its organizations, commissions and agencies and its decision-making processes and events and programs provided by the County government; and (c) facilitating two-way communication between residents, businesses and visitors and County government officials,

To expand and enhance residents access to County programs and services by bringing comprehensive information on those services, programs and resources to residents via cable television and other media; and

To enhance emergency communications in the County.

PROGRAMMING PRIORITIES

The programming priorities are as follows:

Announcements of an emergency nature affecting the public health or safety.

Live programming of sessions of governmental bodies including County Council sessions and hearings and hearings held by the County Executive or by departments or agencies of County Government.

Live press conferences or special events.

Local origination programs about County government services and events and public affairs programming, such as information programming about the government process.

Public service announcements and character-generated material or bulletin board-type material.

Acquired programming deemed to be useful to the residents, businesses and visitors of Montgomery County.

PROHIBITIONS

The government channel must not broadcast:

Information concerning any lottery, gift, enterprise or similar scheme, offering prizes dependent, in whole or in part, upon lot or chance, or any prizes drawn or awarded by means of any such lottery, gift, enterprise or scheme, whether the list contains any part or all such prizes.

Material that is intended to defraud the viewer or designed to obtain money by false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises.

Obscene matter.

Libelous or slanderous matter as defined by law.

Advertising materials whose primary purpose is to promote the sale of commercial products, trade or services. This prohibition does not apply to promotion of government materials and services for which a fee may be charged.

Audio or visual reference to any business, service or product for which any economic consideration was received by anyone in exchange for the display, announcement and/or reference to such business, service, or product or service. However, brief audio and video credit, which complies with Executive Regulation 31-90 minus logos or slogans, may be given at the end of a program where special materials or assistance have been donated by a commercial or charitable enterprise.

Political programming by individual candidates after their public announcement of candidacy or filing for office, by political party representatives, or by supporters and opponents of any candidates designed to campaign for or against candidates, questions or referendums appearing on an election ballot.

The following is not be considered political programming:

Statements by persons who receive incidental air time as part of a public meeting being carried by the government channel.

Statements made in public meetings as part of the normal debate preceding official action.

Statements made in response to reporters’ questions in a news broadcast dealing with public policy issues.

Any public meeting or hearing that is carried, e.g. County Council sessions, pubic hearings, must not be edited to change substantive content.

CLOSED CAPTIONING

As the Americans with Disabilities Act celebrated its tenth anniversary, County Cable Montgomery began closed captioning programming in 2000. Closed captioning is a process that creates text on a live video signal or on videotape. The text is a written transcription of the audio content of the live or video taped media. Closed captions are hidden as data within the television signal and they must be decoded to be displayed on your television screen. With either a set-top decoder or one of the newer caption-ready sets, you can switch captions on or off with a touch of a button.

Closed captioning is not only for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. These services also provide a useful tool for those for whom English is a second language.

Stay Informed

Policies

Translation

The Google Translate Tool is displayed dynamically on Montgomery County web pages using a Google javascript function. The function is used to translate County web pages into different languages. However, the Google function displays a drop-down menu form field (with no label) and a Google logo image which has no alt tag. Google is aware of this issue.